“The Foundling only perceived his parents in a general projection or identification which abolished their separateness; hence the ambiguity of his emotions and the incapacitating lack of conflict,” Marthe Robert: Origins of the Novel. She works with Freud’s model of the family novel.
Friday
I spend the whole day alone, shut in at my desk, without going out. Reading several books, warding off the cold and loneliness with a bottle of whiskey. I go in circles around the room, planning projects and searching for what can be “the most direct path” (to where?).
Tuesday 29
Entire days up in the branches; apart from that, vague anxiety and bad readings (S. Crane, V. Nabokov, W. Styron). Unexpected visits, Graciela came back looking for me for the third time.
In An Expedition… by Mansilla, the story of Corporal Gómez. The man stabs his wife because he dreams that she is sleeping with his enemy. He believes in the dream. A valiant man kills (“in his dreams”) an officer who hit him in the middle of a battle. In reality he is drunk and kills another man, but he believes it was his “enemy.” Mansilla tries to save him, but he is executed. His sister dreams he has died and comes from far away, certain (“I know”) that her brother has died. A curious Shakespearean breath in this story.
The same thing in Facundo: the businessman enters a bar and does not recognize Facundo Quiroga (who is stretched out on the counter) and curses him because he owes him money. Someone talks to Facundo, says “my general.” The man realizes who it is and gets on his knees and begs forgiveness. Quiroga laughs and lets him go with the money. Years later the businessman is a beggar, reminding him of the anecdote in the door of a church. Quiroga gives him a gold coin.
Another from Facundo: Quiroga is going to execute an officer with his own sword. The officer defends himself and takes the sword from him twice, giving it back to him with pride and honor. Facundo ties him up and then kills him.
On Saturday I assembled my work for the coming months, three courses, two of them on the same day. I will have more money and more work than ever before in my life. A man who earns his living by reading.
Wednesday 30
An excess of demand: in the newspaper El Cronista they ask me for a piece about Pavese and also a short story. In August, the lectures.
Yesterday seeing Pola, a long tiring conversation, dinner at the Agüero restaurant with memories of the past. In the end she doesn’t want to go to bed and I return home alone in the early morning. At sunrise, not having slept, I think Assumed Name is bad and poorly written. I sit down on the bed and let myself go among those lost illusions.
Thursday 31
I have come back to Pavese, to the atmosphere of my beginnings. I remember that an article about him was the first thing ever I published, more than ten years ago.
Two days pass, and I don’t make any progress. Captured here and there by some stray readings: Stephen Crane, William Styron.
Friday, August 1
The desire for an impossible desire? That is what his listener says. Veils: netted screens to cover nostalgia.
X Series. A long afternoon with Rubén K., sitting in a variety of bars. We know that, to me, he holds the prestige of revolutionary politics, a practice I have always thought of as done by others (Casco, Lucas), whom I have unhappily seen “selling out.” Not Rubén, however, despite his constantly renewed optimism, his monotonous list of contacts (now via Cámpora). He does not seem to have a memory, and that must be a politician’s “rationale”: How long, for example, will he maintain the stupid pretense of expanding his group by capturing the pictures of other parties? In the end David, whom I had planned to meet, appeared, and then for the first time Rubén started to talk with a priestly tone with no content beyond a vague reformism: “allying” with Cámpora, Alende, etc. No political analysis at all; in short, the deficiencies that I endure personally.
A curious close to the night, I decide to go back along Corrientes and not by Callao to walk a bit further. Happy to go to sleep alone, aided by the wine. At La Paz, through the window, I see Tristana’s face at a table with other women; Amanda is with a new companion, who starts talking about books as soon as he sees me come in. She seems more and more like a ghost, plays harmless games with Silvia P. and Tristana, and I pretend to be distracted while hearing the lines Amanda says, trying to let me know she’s thinking about me. Why, in short, do I spend time on this nonsense?
Saturday
To Adrogué and back, to the neighborhoods of my childhood. I look at the old houses, saddened by the memories, the good times. At home I fill my time by organizing the boxes with Grandfather Emilio’s archives. I spend the night reading letters, notes, and looking at photos. There are still tenants occupying the front part, kind and generous people (he is a printer, fairly well known among my publishing friends.
Monday
I finish the night with Soares and Di Paola at La Paz, and Miguel Briante is there, as always. Long conversations and jokes. Miguel is charming, always telling his sumptuous anecdotes.
Tuesday 5
A beautiful morning, the city’s fog against the river. Strange signs, destruction that retains its elegance.
Wednesday
I meet Tristana at the restaurant on Serrano and we spend the night together. She sits on the floor, her face to the picture window. She leaves me with the letters that she writes to me when she is alone.
Sunday 10
Yesterday a visit from Roa Bastos, he tells the beautiful story of the end of Solano López. He has written I, the Supreme, a masterwork, but that does not change anything. He is alone, sick, and penniless.
Monday 11
A meeting at the SADE, a list of writers for the elections. Castelnuovo, Kordon, Conti, Viñas, it reminded me of the meetings at the students’ center. Then I have dinner with David and Conti. Political crisis, changes in the cabinet, rumors of a coup.
At noon Andrés R. visits me bringing a short story, overwritten and rhetorical (“La lectura de la historia”).
Monday 18
The maté and the kettle on the desk, the clips that fasten the pages, the books, an open notebook, the lamp.
A possible version of Hamlet where he does not question the presence of his dead father and his ghost but only has doubts about his own reality. “Am I alive or dead?” the mourner wonders, sustaining himself on the repetition of the verb “to be.”
Tuesday 19
Last night, after a melancholy meeting in the SADE with naïve young people and mature writers who delude themselves about winning the elections, I had dinner with David. As always, I let myself be pulled along by his enthusiasm and the amusing stories he tells me about his life. The trip to Bolivia in 1956 and his triumphs.
In a couple hours’ work I make a clean draft of the article on Pavese. At three José Sazbón appears, fearful, very intelligent; he is preparing a course on history and literature. We discuss it. When he leaves, I work a little while longer and don’t leave home until Hugo V. and his minions come over. A lackluster meeting, vague plans to produce a pamphlet about art and propaganda. At night I teach a fairly good class on negativity and evil to the psychoanalysts.
Thursday
Social life: Andrés R. at Norberto Soares’s house. An article by Beatriz Guido on Conti, etc. News, jokes, rumors. In the Martín Fierro bookshop I see Pezzoni, who asks me to do a book on Borges for Sudamericana. But I have sworn never to write a book about Borges.
Friday 22
It is clear that my project has always been to become a well-known writer who makes a living from his books. An absurd and impossible project in this country. And so the need to find another path, but which? Not journalism; perhaps I will end up dedicating myself to teaching, but for now I live off my work as an editor. The risk is always that of being so present in the media as to turn into someone “well known,” someone with a name but not a work.
I read fragments of Enrique Wernicke’s diary in Crisis. Immediately I res
olve to “improve” these notebooks, to write them and not reduce everything to these sporadic notes. This notebook, then, has lasted too long (five months). I’ve never known why I write them.
I’ll spend the night alone, preparing tomorrow’s class. Some peace in spite of the “night terrors.” Who knows if I’ll manage to free myself from the urgency that has separated me from everything for the last ten years, making me live behind a glass. I only know happiness retrospectively.
Saturday
A memory. The afternoon when I went out to walk around the city and saw a woman shouting back and forth with a man who was hanging from the roof.
The long passage of the courses, four hours of speaking to earn what I need.
Roa Bastos comes over, we have a faltering and erratic conversation about English books and Virginia Woolf. The best parts are the stories about his work; I listen to them as though they had been my own many years ago and I had forgotten them. He spends a year in a house in Mar del Plata, doing nothing other than writing, penniless and living on fish. For six months he got up at five in the morning and took amphetamines until he finished I, the Supreme (and had a stroke).
Sunday
I spend the afternoon reading Cosmos by Gombrowicz. Yesterday I received a letter notifying me of the eviction suit. I go to the theater with Iris in the rain to see an adaptation of Daisy Miller.
Monday
I’m going to go to the publishing house, I have to write a letter to one Zimmermann; David sent me his book on Goldman. And I have to go to the office of the attorneys who will defend me in the eviction suit.
Dinner with David and Norberto Soares. We talk about Armando Discépolo.
Wednesday 27
An empty day yesterday. I woke up feverish, with pain in my chest. I slept for twenty-four hours. Iris came and went, the room in shadow. A day erased. Today, in the newspapers, military propositions. Pressure against Numa Laplane from Videla. They are forcing him to retire, and Damasco as well (Minister of the Interior). Isabel Perón becoming more and more isolated.
I spent the day reading James Purdy.
Thursday
I’m still in bed, stretched out, setting deadlines for myself. I read, get bored, let go.
Saturday, August 30
At night, in Pichon-Rivière’s house, a meeting of “young writers,” Briante, Libertella, Soriano. The same nonsense as always, grand empty gestures. If these are my generational peers… Reuniting, especially with Miguel; I feel connected to him in a great mutual understanding. He too is growing old, like me.
Sunday 31
I hear the sound of military marches. I open the window, and it seems as though a circus is approaching.
Borges’s “The Dead Man” in the theater, adapted—in secret—by David. Its merit is a certain quality in the details (searching for his bunk to sleep). Many errors, everything too explicit. Thus the possibility of a “tragic” western is lost.
Monday, September 1
I make a clean copy of my short story about the White Russians in Buenos Aires. A story that feels as if it were written by someone else, but I will earn fifty dollars for it.
In the Payró theater, many groups acting to finance the writers’ campaign in the SADE. The “progressive” current, the same poems as always, the good intentions. I am there, anyway, and all of my efforts seem based in reversing and turning around everything they say. I make literature with “bad” sentiments, and I don’t see that as progress.
Tuesday
A strange ritual. I sat down in a restaurant that specializes in meat and ordered a steak, as though I were a tourist wanting to try the specialties of the country.
Wednesday 3
Everything is possible. A certainty that has always accompanied me. Does that explain my disenchantment? I should make an inventory of my illusions. Disproportionate, no doubt.
Thursday
I begin a new course on Borges at the Institute on Calle Bartolomé Mitre. On the way out I have the thought that I was “too” brilliant… Am I going insane?
I have dinner with Julia. The same criticism as always. A dead man, someone who has no idea what to do. So it’s impossible to think about crossing the city alone to return home. I sleep with her, rather, next to her, both of us dressed, not touching.
Saturday 6
I decide to call Iris on the phone in the the subway tunnel on Uruguay and Corrientes. “You won the competition,” she tells me. Lafforgue called her to officially communicate that I am among the five winners of the detective competition. Some fantasies from age eighteen are achieved, a trip to Europe with her, sponsored by literature.
Sunday 7
Everything seems trivial; the story is nothing out of this world, and yet now it will be seen.
Monday 8
They announce that—along with Goligorsky and Antonio Di Benedetto—I have won the prize in the competition of detective stories with “The Madwoman and the Story of the Crime.” The prize, a trip to Paris. Among the judges, Borges.
My friends call, congratulating me. I finish the night at dinner with Andrés Rivera and Norberto Soares.
Tuesday
I reread “The Glass Box,” I could write a novel with the same method (a diary read in secret by someone else). Carlos stops by to see me. A strange emotion caused by Melina, the way she moves and talks about animals.
In spite of everything, this is a fortunate time, and with that sentence I conclude this notebook.
Wednesday
I meet Amanda at her place. She is waiting for me with champagne to celebrate the prize Fitzgerald-style, etc. Slightly tense but tender toward me. I spend the night with her because it is raining outside (she takes her dog out for a walk every afternoon; she wants a kid; she remembers her past with me nostalgically; she has many fears). She doesn’t want me to go to sleep with my watch on.
Thursday 11
The political situation grows more and more sinister, the military officers taking center stage are reinforced. They plan to order the repression of the union movement. Isabel Perón, now along with Lúder, Lorenzo Miguel, and Calabró, seems weak and hesitant.
Series E. What can be done to improve the style of this diary? Maybe the time has come to type up the seventeen years’ worth of notebooks in order to find the essence and the tone.
Friday
I can’t bear to be alone at night; I want to look for a woman, get together with any one of them, the many who have accumulated from the past, and so I go out into the city. Dinner at Pippo, then the theater, a domestic film (Una mujer by Stagnaro) with unusual technical perfection, empty narration, a combination of commercial film and advertisement with an intellectual air, comparable to the young best sellers. I take a taxi back after having a couple of whiskeys at La Paz and inviting Dipi, Miguel and several strangers for a drink, as though I needed to burn through the money I don’t have.
Saturday
I am reading Conrad, the coward as an epic and tragic subject—Lord Jim. An Outpost of Progress is a kind of Bouvard et Pécuchet.
Monday
I start to type up my first diary (1957–1962), but why? It’s impossible that it could be published.
A meeting at the SADE: Costantini, Conti, Viñas, Iverna Codina, Santoro. We discuss the statements of Elías Castelnuovo (our presidential candidate) against González Tuñón. I go to dinner with David. Beba appears: strange games that I respond to with irony. I like her very much, but the same thing is happening with her as has happened with other women; I prefer to keep myself apart.
Tuesday
I receive an envelope with letters from Tristana, she has written down fragments of dialogues that seem to be said by someone else, but according to her they are my own words.
“I shouldn’t ever sleep again. If only the day had thirty-five hours so I could read everything I want to read and write everything I want to write.”
“You have to understand it, there’s no other way I can explain
it to you, but I’m empty (the description satisfied her, and I added), empty as an empty bottle.”
Those are the things I apparently said to her.
One day I will write a story replicating the letters that a man might receive over the course of the years.
I meet Di Paola at the Ramos bar. He talks a lot, driven on by a strange mythology that dissolves his life and the lives of people around him. His father, who is burned-out and goes from one side of the city to the other, always on foot. Dipi fights with his wife: they hit each other like children, cry, and then embrace. Everything turns into a humorous tale. The best part was his recollection of an interview with Borges: he brought him an apocryphal prologue with which a Colombian poet had singled out his own poems. Borges never said the text was not his. Simply, while Dipi read it to him, he interrupted him with notes: “That line would sound better like this, no?” Or: “Don’t you think it would have been more correct in this way?” In fact, by the end of the interview Borges had produced a text of his own: its subject, praise for a book of poems he had never read.
The Diaries of Emilio Renzi Page 51